“Evergreen State” ferry to retire after 62 years on the job

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Washington state ferry "Evergreen State" will be decommissioned after 62 years of service on Puget Sound.

“Evergreen State” ferry to retire after 62 years on the job

Washington state ferry "Evergreen State" will be decommissioned after 62 years of service on Puget Sound.

Ike was president, America was in the middle of a Cold War, “Rock Around The Clock” was at the top of the charts, and Marilyn Monroe married Joe Dimaggio.

The year was 1954.

And Washington state’s oldest active ferry, the “Evergreen State,” had just been built.

Now, after six decades of shuttling people and cars across Puget Sound, that ferry is being retired – decommissioned and sold – after 62 years of service.

The 87-car vessel uses surplus, World War II-era drive motors.

It was due to retire last spring, but was called back into service over the summer while other boats were repaired.

When the state suddenly retired its steel electric-class vessels in 2007, it forced the full time reactivation of the ferry.

After reactivation, the Evergreen State sailed the San Juan Island routes. The ferry left the San Juan Islands in 2014, replaced by her sister ship MV Klahowya, and made her last official sailing from Friday Harbor on June 29th of that year.

Following that sailing, the ferry was moored at Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island. But a month later, a substantial fleet shortage resulted in her reactivation.

Since then, the ferry had been in service frequently on the Fauntleroy-Vashon-Southworth route.